Is there a way to display a PowerPoint as a slideshow that users can click through?
Might be worth looking at this post and thread. It’s been discussed and tried with Google slides instead of PowerPoint. I’m not sure how much success people have had, but it seems like it might be possible, or at least partially possible
https://community.glideapps.com/t/please-give-us-feedback-web-view/6959/56?u=jeff_hager
Thanks for responding. I looked through that thread and that won’t work for me. I’ve been thinking of ways I could convert the slides into images and then display as an image carousel, but users upload the PPTs, and I can use integromat to make the conversion from PPT to pngs, but I have no way to get them back. I’ll keep thinking of possible workarounds.
There’s also a way to publish a PPT online through a OneDrive account and access it through WebView.
Just spitballing here but…if after what you mentioned above you added a Google Drive module in Integromat to upload the PPT slide pngs into your Google Drive - could you then search them and add them to your Glide app’s Google Sheet directly using a Google Sheet (Add Row) module, adding the “share image” link and any other details about each slide to said row…would that work?
After that, maybe use the “Swipe” Layout to display the slides…could make for an interesting (and interactive) PPT presentation.
Just my $.02
Isn’t there a way to use Webview to display Google Slides? I can’t find the link but I can remember I tried that myself.
Haven’t tried it, but wouldn’t surprise me if slides don’t allow themselves to be embedded.
But… if you publish them first then it would work, for sure.
I appreciate the help, everyone!
The challenge is that this is user-generated content. They upload the PPTs, and I need users to be able to download them as PPTs too. I would also like to allow users to “preview” the PPTs through the app, so they know if they want to download that particular PPT or not.
I need a solution that starts with a user-uploaded pptx and converts it into something that can be viewed, like an image carousel.
Thanks for responding!
I use Glide tables not GS. I could set up a google sheet just for this purpose, but I don’t know that it’s really worth it given other work I need to accomplish too. Having the ability to catch webhooks from integromat in Glide tables would be awesome.
Is the app connected to a Google Sheet?
If it is, then there will be more options.
For example, you could take the uploaded file and pass it through an online convertor to generate an image, and then display that in the app.
I use ConvertAPI for a similar purpose - to convert PDF files into PNG images. It handles MS Office file conversions - see https://www.convertapi.com/ms-office-api.
Edit: Scratch that, I just saw that you’re using Glide Tables, duh.
Thanks for the suggestions! Depending on how much not having a preview bothers me I might give in and create/add a GS to this app to make it happen. Thanks for the suggestion of ConvertAPI - I was looking at a few options and it’s helpful to have a recommendation to go on.
I’d certainly recommend ConvertAPI if you get to that point. I’ve been using it for several months and I do about 1000 conversions per month - both PDF->PNG and adding encryption to PDF files - and it works flawlessly. And the pricing is reasonable.
Just to be clear on this, if you started with no Google Sheets then there’s no way to add it midway, as of now.
Right, I’d have to start over on the project
You know, I’m pretty sure it would still be possible using a combination of something like ConvertAPI and the Experimental Code column.
I could see lots of uses for a general solution to convert any document into an image - maybe this is something @david might consider for one of his morning coffee breaks
I was thinking about that, but I want the whole PPT to display. As far as I can tell, if it was a pdf file instead, I could display it as an image, but only the cover slide would show, right?
I’d have to check the docs, but I’m pretty sure there is an option to return a multi page document as an array of images. Not sure how that would work with an XC column though. I guess you’d need to coerce that into something that could be displayed as a carousel.
If possible that would be awesome. If I had an array of images I could display them as a carousel using the image component, right?
I believe so. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried this with XC, but in theory I think it should work.